The Great Porn/Sex/Gender/Free Speech Debate

In the early days of 1997 (shortly after the release of The People
vs. LarryFlynt), alt.music.chapel-hill became embroiled in an ultimately
wide-rangingdebate about the limits of free expression, pornography, porn's
link to real-world problems like sexual harrassment and abuse, the slippery differencebetween "erotica" and "porn," and whether such a difference exists.

Like most such discussions, it had its high points and its low points,
and thenunraveled relatively quickly, without much in the way of resolution
or closure.

I'm sure many of us continued the discussion in person, or via private
e-mail.I'm sure many others of us never even gave it another thought after
it ended.

But one participant chose to write about it, in a Chapel Hill zine
called Ha!Diane Wininger, one of the major participants in the discussion,
cut-n-pastedshort excerpts from the discussion, removed any indication as to
who wrotewhat, and falsely presented them as the unified voice of alt.music.chapel-hill.

Unfortunately, she didn't really capture the full flavor of the discussion.
And herinsistence on removing the names of the original authors makes it
difficult for theaverage Ha! reader to
apply his or her critical skills to the mishmash of varyingvoices and opinions. In short, she did a poor job of representing
the debate.

In the interest of fairness and completeness, here
are the quotes excerpted byDiane in her article. (The sections printed in a contrasting color
were omittedfrom the quotes in Ha!)
They're linked to the complete posts which they wereexcerpted from, with all original author and date information intact.

It should become quickly apparent that the bulk of the quotes (14
of the 22)were taken from a mere 3 posts by one person: Margaret Campbell.
In fact,Diane's whole article would be better titled: "Tidbits from an Argument
withMargaret." In addition, all 22 of the quotes were taken from only
10 posts,which were written by a total of 5 people. Hardly representative
of anything.

Due to the amount of correspondence involved, we don't currently
have the fulltext of *every* message posted during the course of the discussion.
However, atthe bottom of this page, there is a list of the
main threads involved. Clicking onany of them will take you to the DejaNews archive of that particular
thread.

"I for one can accept that there could be some
socially redeeming/artisticmerit in the explicit, violent, and BEAUTIFUL photography of Japanesewomen in bondage. I don't find it particularly "sexual" but I do
find itformally beautiful and ripe with imagry that I'm unwilling to even
"discourage"(not to mention ban ) from public discourse. The fact that
the John Zorn/NakedCity covers came under attack and were ultimately blacked out makes
me sick."

"If you can definitively define the difference
between erotica and porn, I'dlove to hear it. Those that I have heard usually boil down
to what *I* likeis erotica, that stuff s/he likes is porn. One of my favorite
examples isPreston's Flesh and the Word, widely hailed as a masterpiece of
gay maleerotica. Problem is, most of the stories
in it were originally published inmagazines such as Drummer that almost no one
defines as anything butpornography.
Preston's take was that erotica is hardcover, porn ispaperback. Which works about as well as any other definition
I've heard."

"I don't want to get
into too much trouble, but can we better defineexploitation of women? Granted, Flynt
was an asshole, and made a job ofit.However,
Hustler magazine and all of the others like it don'treally exploit women, do they? The women do get paid as far
as I know.People should explore sexuality however they feel most comfortable.Some men (and women) dig the two dimensional
stuff. If you want to talkabout objectification, talk about it.
But sexually explicit materialshould be available to those who want it and
are willing to pay whateverprice there may be. If you want
to change the image of women, boycottbeer and jeans and perfume, etc."

"I'm sorry, but I really don't see a
whole lot of difference in the rhetoric ofthe anti-sex and anti-porn so-called feminists. Most of the
anti-porn feministsI've read *do* object to nondegrading images. The claim seems
to be thatany sexual image of a woman objectifies her, and therefore degrades
her.

"The anti-sex feminists also say that gay male
porn degrades women.Either Andrea Dworkin or Catherine MacKinnon
has said that all penetrativesex, no matter how consensual, is rape.
And when informed that BettyFriedan has signed a petition for the Feminists
for Free Expression, saidthat Betty was not a feminist."

"A few years ago, I used to collect Hustler
magazines (before I gota membership to the Video Bar ;). I remember getting that 16th analversaryissue. Don't act like you guys (and some of
you gals) don't rememberit...... OK maybe the gay guys (and straight
gals) don't really have areason to remember it. hmmm.... HOW 'BOUT
THIS? For those of you whoread such smut and maybe don't wanna really
admit to it, it was the one thatfeatured in one of the pictorals two S&M lesbians in the bathroom
with theone getting rough and flushing the other's head in the toilet.

Anyhow,
that was probably the best bunch of artistic raunch that Ihave ever had the pleasure of reading. I remember spending many
hours inthe bathroom... um... admiring the photography and reading the interviewand history of Larry Flint.

That guy is one asshole
that I like. He pissed off the world andorganized religeon. And even though he paid very dearly for it,
he neverstopped pissing on the establishment. He said exactly what he wanted
tosay and he loved who ever the he wanted to love WITHOUT giving onegosh darn about what the world thought."

"As for women and porn, the study that is trotted out is the one
that showedcollege males "violent" pornography (an entirely undefined term)
and thatfound the men were then more violent. Things
that are left out of thereference--someone did the exact same
study, using your standard blow-em-upmovie, and found exactly the same reaction. IOW, it isn't
the porn, it isthe exciting violence. Also, when the
subjects were re-tested a short timelater, the more violent urges had passed away."

"As for rape statistics: a. they are not correlated
with any increase inpopulation, just presented as sheer numbers,
which are meaningless; b. insome studies, the definition of rape has included such things as
beingwhistled at by construction workers."

"The surveys that included such things as being whistled at as sexualharrassment (rape was overstating my case) are usually touted by
TBTN.And speakers at TBTN marches frequently define the harrassment as
aform of rape."

"I can't remember where I encountered the study, but it was a study
of thecorrelation between the availability and domestic spousal abuse.
Theresearchers were rather horrified to find that in areas where porn
was morewidely available, there was less spousal abuse."

"Snuff films are trotted out as the ne plus ultra of the argument.
Problemis, no one has ever seen one, and no researcher or politico orinvestigator has ever found one. They appear not to exist,
to be an entirelyfalse bugaboo."

"Short form is that I've worked on the
fringes of porn since 1988. The *only*harrassment I've seen or gotten has been either from anti-porn self-describedfeminists or the post office. (I was
to be a witness for Adam & Eve at onepoint, and during the opening discussions
with the post office people, I saidI also rejected movies I found misogynistic.
The postal inspector honestlydid not know what the word meant.)"

"What is context?
Should any given man think twice before approaching awoman in a bar? How do people get together these days?
If a guyinstigates a conversation, how does he do it? Should we all
adopt anAntioch College introduction protocol? Men are and should
be afraid thatanything they say or do can be held against him in a court of law.
So howdo we meet Mr(s). Right?

I'm not the expert at debate (obviously).
Maybe my agenda is ultimatelywanting to meet a person that I really feel
comfortable with. Actually Ihave. But I hate to think about
what would have happened if she had takenanything I've said over the years as harassment. That would
have reallysucked."

"Now that's just mean. Who decided a whistle
was a sexual advance? Whogets to decide this? Is a compliment a sexual advance? Is a whistle
a coursecompliment? If I think calling a whistle sexual harrassment is silly,
doesthat automatically mean I think rape is hype? Woooo Wooooo."

"I think this is terrible. I do. But if I
get thrown in jail for whistlingat a female because some asshole tried to assault you, it would
be aterrible injustice. We try to punish the guilty, but the law is
designedto do just that, punish the guilty. You cannot remove every chance
of anattack without removing the rights of all people."

"Of course the ACLU uses porn to raise money. So does Dworkin
et al.Sex sells. But I wouldn't accuse Dworkin et al. of being in
it for the moneythey get from porn. Why is it different when the ACLU does
it? The ACLUalso defended the KKK--did they get money
from them, or was the hatemail they got payment enough?

And the churches funded a lot of anti-porn propaganda. This
is the natureof propaganda--if you have money, you can usually get your message
out.It says nothing about the truth or falsity of your message."

"Wow. I don't know
if I know who you are (and I'm not sure I need to) butI feel I ought to tell you to take a deep
breath when trying to make arational point or two in a public debate.
I've never read anythig thatseemed to want to be read as rational on ch-scene
that read as outragedas your response. I actually think everythign
Margaret wrote makes prettygood sense and I knw there's nothing she would
vouch for in public thatshe couldn't back up - she is the consumate
'netperson' and knows herstuff. Try to take a few more scans
over your responses before you hitthe send button.

Just as an extra barb, why don't you call Dworkin and ask her how
she paysher bills? The research factor is on the rise here, y'all...
look out."

"I'm afraid Dworkin *is* using porn to make
money. She could have written onthe sexism inherent in, say, the fashion industry. Or the
fast foodindustry. But she chose porn, and as a result, she gets book
contracts, andpeople pay to hear her speak, and to see her slides of bad, evil
porn.

The main difference between what the pornographers sell and what
Dworkinsells is that the pornographers have releases from the models, and
they paythem. Dworkin, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't.

As for the ACLU, I do suppose you know that it stands for American
CivilLiberties Union, yes? Are they to turn down constitutional
cases becausethey might make money? Saying that they sometimes work for
people who canpay them is *not* saying that they are for sale to the highest bidder."